Autoethnography is a contentious scholarly inquiry fraught with issues of ethics, representation, objectivity and defending its purpose.
In Carolyn Ellis’ autoethnography, “Final Negotiations- A Story of Love, Loss and Chronic Illness”, she presents her narrative of the nine-year relationship between herself and her partner, Gene Weinstein, that ends with his demise from his chronic illness, emphysema. The book is centred around the negotiation of power between the two.
The issue to contend with in Ellis’ work is that in telling her life story, which is so intricately woven with her partner’s life and death story, is the fact that Weinstein is no more and has had no say in how he is being represented as the work was crafted well after his demise. All choices have been made by Ellis alone (which she acknowledges) and Weinstein has not consented and nor could he consent to this ‘evocative’ piece of writing. Despite being a former collaborator of Ellis’, sharing the same professional discipline and consenting to her note taking of their dialogues and experiences together while he was alive and having been a supporter of her work and the direction she would like to take it, the final narration has not been consented to nor could it be. And here lies the dilemma.
The concern is that Ellis lays bare all parts of Weinstein’s life making no distinction of what is personal and what is private for him. This narrative offers itself as a study of her emotional experience in a romantic relationship fraught with power struggles.
The purpose of this storytelling is unclear. Is it a story about power in a romantic relationship or one about caring for a terminally ill partner? What purpose does baring so much of Gene’s life serve to do?
My thoughts
Perhaps what autoethnography as a method needs is a collaborator who must work alongside to edit and help keep the focus and purpose of the study as this can be easily obscured for the autoethnographer and understandably so.
Distinguish between autobiography and autoethnography. Where does memory-work in the context of Fine Art lie in relation to these two terms?
Proust refers to his ‘Swann’s Way’ as a novel – not autobiography or autoethnography – the purpose is storytelling 🙂